1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laser diode device, a method of driving the same, and a laser diode apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In these years, in the advanced scientific region researches using laser light with the pulse time on the attosecond time scale or on the femtosecond time scale, ultrashort pulse and ultrahigh power laser is actively used. As the ultrashort pulse and ultrahigh power laser, for example, titanium/sapphire laser is known. Such a titanium/sapphire laser is an expensive and large solid laser light source, which is a main factor to inhibit spread of the technology. If the ultrashort pulse and ultrahigh power laser is realized with the use of a laser diode, substantial miniaturization, price reduction, and high stability are able to be realized, which is expected to become a breakthrough for generalizing advanced scientific technology in this field.
Meanwhile, short pulsation of the laser diode has been actively researched since 1960s in the communication system field. As a method of generating short pulses in the laser diode, gain switching method, loss switching method (Q switching method), and mode locking method are known. In these methods, high output is pursued by combining the laser diode with a diode amplifier, a nonlinear optical device, an optical fiber and the like.